Speaking the language of the heart: Listening with the ears of your heart.

Someone said to me recently “I can’t always tell when you are joking or when you are being serious.” I was half pleased about this. The truth is that sometimes I am at my most serious when I am joking, or at least half joking. There is a place for humour, even in the most serious situations. Sometimes absurdity, helps get you through. “There is a time for everything under the sun.”

People often call to ask my advice about things. I am not sure why they do, as I am loathed to give advice. I will listen and I will share my experience, but I am loathed to tell another person what they should or shouldn’t do. How would I know in any case. The times I do, when I am very direct, are few and far between and they are usually what you might call emergency moments. Again “There is a time for everything under the sun”

I have learnt that often in life all that people really need is someone to share things with, someone who will listen and empathise, not solve their problems for them. I am usually good at this, although sometimes I am not. I have my limits. I noticed I had drifted away while listening to someone the other day. The truth was that I was exhausted. I had been holding a rather challenging memorial service, which had just ended. Someone was sharing some things with me afterwards and I had just drifted away. There are other times when I get distracted by the events of my life too, sometimes the distraction can help.

This happened on Monday. I was out in the park with Molly. She was a having a whale of a time playing with other dogs. She has become a bit of a ball thief. She is not really interested in the ball, she has just learned that if she grabs the ball and runs off with it, then the other dog will chase her. She loves being chased and she loves to wrestle with other dogs. While she was playing my phone rang. It was a friend whose mum has been seriously ill and has been in hospital. She had some concerns about her mum as well as other family issues. She needed to talk. I listened and encouraged and then suddenly found myself distracted by the dog Molly was playing with getting over excited and somewhat amorous. It is ok as he isn’t intact. The dogs owner did nothing as she was engaged in an exercise class with a whole load of other women. I have met them before and her cockerpoo likes to dominate. I spent the next twenty minutes trying to be there for my friend, whilst having to constantly pull the other dog off Molly, only to have her run back to him to continue the wrestling. It was right scene. I kept apologising to my friend. She didn’t mind. Infact if truth be told I think it helped her. The levity and absurdity of the situation lifted her out of her concerns. She was calling for advice or someone to solve her problems, she just needed to talk. More importantly she just needed someone to listen, despite their own problems, someone to bare witness. Not someone to fix, or solve the problem, just to listen, to be present to her. Thankfully as the week has gone on her mum is improving as his her anxiety.

I spend much of my time listening to others, actually to life itself. It is a large part of my role as a minister. Most of the worship I create comes from listening, on oh so many levels and then making some sense of it all. This address being a good example.

Now while I do listen to life on oh so many levels, I do enjoy listening to words spoken from human lips. Words are powerful things, they touch deep places within us. And yet all that words are, when reduced to their merely physical components are vibrating air. This is true and yet it really isn’t true. Words are so much more than their physical components. They connect people to deep, deep places in one another’s beings. They are imitations of the Divine I suspect, they are like seeds in so many ways, they begin to bring salvation or utter destruction. And yet they are just noises formed from vibrating air.

I love listening to people when they speak from their heart; I love listening to people when they speak what they must speak. I have particularly enjoyed listening to the many and varied people who have attended the groups I lead at both congregations. I am fascinated by what comes from those in attendance. I just love listening to folk as they try to articulate their varied understandings of life and their personal spirituality to others. It is the same thing in other groups that I attend, as folk try to articulate their experiences. I love to hear the language of the heart and I love to listen with the ears of my heart. It is Divine activity, it is love coming to life.

Being listened to and especially being accepted and understood is so vital to all people. I have noticed this particularly in the grief group I host. Whenever a new person attends the one common feature for everyone is this sense of loneliness that they express after the loved one has gone, how they feel unheard by others, like their words are not being accepted or that others have tired of hearing them. The beauty of the group is that each can come and speak freely and are truly accepted. I have witnessed some moments of deep connection within the group. I have truly seen love incarnated in the air and words that we share together, it is a truly beautiful blessing.

There is something truly beautiful is speaking words, heart to heart. The language of the heart is not really about correct use of words but a way of being with each other, it is an intention, it is about invitation it is about allowing others to be who they are in your space, this is true openness by the way. Openness is not about telling another all about yourself, instead it is about inviting another to be themselves in your space.

Words connect us in some very special ways, they can be incredibly powerful. They can begin to bring deep healing or can be deeply destructive. What matters is the intention behind them. What seems to matter is the condition of our heart and soul as we speak what we must speak.

Words are powerful they can be either destructive or creative. Perhaps an example of their creative power comes at the beginning of John’s Gospel and the following lines:

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.'

According to John the spoken word can literally create life, in fact all life. Now of course in the original Greek, which these opening words were written in the word for “Word” was originally “Logos” which roughly translated actually does not mean merely “word,” but also “speech,” “principle,” “meaning” or “thought.” In Greek philosophy, it is also referred to as Divine Reason or the Mind of God. So it could mean God speaking life into being, linking it to the first verses from Genesis when God is said to have breathed life into being, remembering always that he saw this creation as “Good”. So “word” here means, in my view, that life is the meaning coming into being and Jesus is the example of this in human form. An example we can all aspire to. For we can all incarnate Love, we can all be a part of the Divine creation. It begins in our words and how we say these words for they are an expression of our meaning. It also begins in how we listen to others. Our ability for each to share, an open loving invitation. This Divine activity. This space between us is the Kin-dom of Love.

When we speak we are not merely flapping our lips, vibrating air we are engaged in Divine activity we are creating or destroying life. It is the same with listening. If we listen with ears of heart we are creating sacred space, this Kin-dom of Love.

There is no greater gift that you can give to another than your time and your presence. When we do, we are truly engaged in Divine activity. You don’t have to say much. Rarely can you solve their troubles. You can give them the most precious gift you possess though, your time and your loving presence. I have often found in those moments the love of God coming alive in me and in the person I am sharing my time and space with.

Minister need it too. I have been accompanied by many people this last year or so. It has touched me deeply. So many folk have been a good loving friend at times. I also sought out professional help, which has now come to an end. Thank you for the help there. This time and space has helped me heal and be ready to move forward in love. I was also intently listened for a couple of hours at the beginning of the year. I was interviewed for a book. I was sent the first draft of the section written from this interview the other day. It was fascinating to read what the author came up with. He was a great listener. I noticed that during that time, sharing my heart and being listened to, I reached some deeper truths about myself, this life, and the God of my limited understanding that is the heart of it. Something the author noticed and commented on in the piece her wrote. It was the same with Hannah the psychologist. That time being listened to in a skillfull way has enabled me to find those sometimes hard to reach places. I am grateful for this. It has enabled me to do listen more intently, to be fully present to this life and those I share it with.

I love people; I love listening to people, to connect with what they are sharing, what they are struggling with. I love to identify with others, to connect. It makes me feel so alive. Now of course this is my job, I am after all a minister. That said we can all minister, to minister is to serve and how do we serve, well by giving our hearts to each other, by opening the ears of our hearts, by creating sacred space.

I’m going to end this address with a beautiful bit of wisdom by Nancy Shaffer “Hauling Out Stones”, which I believe exemplifies what I have been talking about here.

“Hauling Out Stones” by Nancy Shaffer

Once, he said an odd thing:
Forgiving begins with someone
sitting near.
Later, he said, It isn’t for the one
who did the hurting.
It’s the other one who needs it.
One day, without warning,
he wept.
I sat close.
He told an old hurt
in half-sentences and single words
like stones he was coming upon, new;
like tree limbs, broken,
which he needed both arms for hauling aside.
A half-dozen times that summer we sat,
he weeping, hauling out stones,
gathering limbs; I near.
The stones got smaller,
his sentences, longer.
He said, It’s the crying part
I couldn’t do by myself.
And later he said, I feel cleaned out.
A wan smile.
Still later, he said,
I think I’ve done it.
Made a kind of peace, he meant.
He slapped his palm hard against mine.
Laughed. Slapped his palm again.

So lets create that space, where love comes to life. Let’s encourage the language of the heart, lets listen with the ears of our hearts. For if we do, that Kin-dom of Love will begin to built right here, right now.

The devotion below is based on the material in this "blogspot"

Wake Now My Senses To Hear Life's Call

“i thank You God for most this amazing day” by ee cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing day:

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;

this is the birth day of life and love and wings:

and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any

--lifted from the no of all nothing—

human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake

And now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I was out walking the other day, when I once again experienced what is voiced so beautifully in the words above by e e cummings; once again the ears of my ears had awoken and the eyes of my eyes had opened to something new. In fact it felt as though all my senses had opened like they had never opened before.

Now one of the reasons for this was that I had just had my ears cleared. I had for weeks been suffering quite badly with my hearing and at last the treatment had worked and I could hear clearly once again. I had also in recent times had trouble with my voice, I felt like I had lost my voice somewhat. Thankfully this seems to have been resolved. I have, as I have many times, re-found my voice. The changes in my voice had been due to the weight loss over the last few months. So many of the physical aspects of my being have changed and this has taken some re-adjustment in my living and being. I feel I can hear in a new way and I can speak once again. I have also noticed other changes in all my senses, including what they call the sixth sense…My senses have been awakened as I have heard life’s call.

Now as I was walking I noticed I could hear many new bird songs and just as I looked up and noticed birds, I had not paid attention to before, a smell filled my nostrils that reawakened a childhood memory. My mind turned to a time, during my childhood, when I would have been about 11. The smell reminded me of working in my dad’s butchers shop and of making sausages and beef burgers, a job I used to delight in doing. I smiled as I waked and as I did lots of other memories came flooding back into my current consciousness. Memories that only brought joy and happiness at this moment, but ones that have in past brought tears and pain to my experiences. Memory, or at least the way I remember has changed so much over time.

They say that you cannot re-write history and that you cannot change the past. I am not convinced by this. I have noticed that as time has gone by so much of my life, or at least how I remember my life has changed. Now don’t get me wrong it’s not that the events have changed, just how I remember them. The darkness and the pain is still there, only now it is the correct proportion. Today the difficult memories are surrounded and filled by the joy and the love that was always there too.

Memory is a fascinating thing and I do believe it is connected to way we experience life currently. I suspect that it is connected to our senses and how awake they are to our current experiences. Just as the way that we feel about our past influences, impacts on, our current lives. Therefore it was no surprise that the opening of my senses brought a new experience of my past.

Now the sense of smell has long been connected to memory. Neuro-science suggests that upon detecting a smell the olfactory neurones in the upper part of the nose generate an impulse which is passed to the brain along the olfactory nerve. The part of the brain this arrives at first is called the olfactory bulb, which processes the signal and then passes information about the smell to other areas closely connected to it, collectively known as the limbic system.

The limbic system comprises a set of structures within the brain that are regarded  as playing a major role in controlling mood, memory, behaviour and emotion. This affects areas of what is often referred to as “the old brain”, so called as they were present within the brains of the very first mammals. It is suggested that those with full olfactory function may be able to think of smells that evoke particular memories and that this can happen spontaneously. This is exactly what happened to me while out walking the other day, as I felt my senses had reawakened, once again, as long forgotten memories came alive in my current consciousness. 

Wake now my senses, let me hear life’s call.

Just as how I experience the present moment effects how I remember the past, I also believe it is important to understand that how I remember impacts on how I experience the present moment and also how I experience the future. As I look at times in my own spiritual journey I regret my attempts to reject my past. I now know that to truly bring the moment alive, rather than to just passively live in the moment, I must bring the experience of my whole life into my experience of my living and being right here and right now. That includes those memories that cause pain and distress. Attempting to fully let go of them is neither healthy nor possible.

I love the way that John O’Donohue expressed the importance of memory and remembering in living a fully present live. In “Eternal Echoes” he wrote

“Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Memory rescues experience from total disappearance. The kingdom of memory is full of the ruins of presence. It is astonishing how faithful experience actually is; how it never vanishes completely. Experience leaves deep traces in us. It is surprising that years after something has happened to you the needle of thought can hit some groove in the mind, and music of a long vanished event can rise in your soul as fresh and vital as the evening it happened. Memory provides such shelter and continuity of identity. Memory is also fascinating because it is an indirect and latent presence in one's mind. The past seems to be gone and absent. Yet the grooves in the mind hold the traces and vestiga of everything that has ever happened to us. Nothing is ever lost or forgotten. In a culture addicted to the instant, there is a great amnesia. Yet it is only through the act of remembrance, literally re-membering, that we can come to poise, integrity, and courage. Amnesia clogs the inner compass and makes the mind homeless. Amnesia makes the sense of absence intense and haunted. We need to retrieve the activity of remembering, for it is here that we are rooted and gathered.”

Sometimes memory can become blocked up in our bodies too. I noticed the other day, while experiencing a deep tissue massage, memories come out of my being as I entered a place of deep meditation and transcendence. It brought to mind the following, taken from “A Walk Between Heaven and Earth” by Burghild Nina Holzer

"From time to time a friend comes to my house to give me a massage. I have decided that “massage” is a very inappropriate word for it. I decided this should be called “listening to the flesh.” She touches my body, and in each place she touches, the body has stored pain and joy, memories, knowledge of many kinds. And I begin to listen – to my arm, my shoulder, my belly, the soles of my feet, my tongue, my uterus.

I begin to walk in the landscape of my body, the landscape of my flesh. And I begin to write the autobiography of my flesh.

Perhaps my toe wants to tell me a story about my childhood, of the slimy places it touched, the sharp-edged stones, of the times when it still reached my mouth, toe or thumb being equally good.

Perhaps my womb wants to cry the story of the child I lost, of what wanted to be formed and what slipped out into darkness before it could be held securely by the arms near the heart.

Maybe my throat wants to tell me of all the songs held back. Held back in fear, or in doubt, or in anger, all the songs that the heart already knows but that I have not voiced. Perhaps I need to walk in that place, down my throat to my vocal cords."

All this brought to mind a favourite Bible passage from Mark’s Gospel (Ch7 vv 31-37) of Jesus healing a deaf mute man. I once heard Rev Bill Darlison preach on this. He believed that the passage and this particular section of Mark’s Gospel is attempting to teach us of the need to live more open and connected lives. He pointed out that the author is trying to make us listen by using a clever linguistic aid. In the account he states that Jesus says the Arameaic word Ephphatha as he heals the man. This is perhaps not so strange on the surface as this is certainly the language that Jesus would have spoken. What is strange though is that this is inconsistent with the rest of the Gospel which was originally written in Greek. Bill says that this is a deliberate ploy to make we who are listening to the account pay attention, because something really important is being taught here. In a published version of the address Bill states that:

“The word Ephphatha means ‘Open up!’ What Jesus is saying to this deaf man is the Gospel’s message to you and me. This man was suffering from a physical deafness; we are suffering from spiritual deafness. Our ears are closed to the entreaties of those who live in foreign countries, whose skin colour is different from our own, whose way of life does not correspond with ours. We are deaf to the words even of those who live in close proximity to us, but whose traditions are different from ours. We don’t hear what they are saying, and so our opinions about them and their customs are garbled and worthless...It’s a shocking reminder of our own refusal to listen attentively to the unfamiliar voices. It is only when we are prepared to open up that our prejudices can be eroded; and only then that the impediment in our speech will be removed and our opinions will be worth listening to. We have to break the shell of our own tribalism and exclusiveness.”

(now the ears of my ears awake And now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I have come to believe that in order to live fully awake, mentally, physically and spiritually requires one to be awake to all that is, all that has been and all that has ever been. It is of no use just merely living in the present, in a passive sense, to merely be the observer. The spiritual life is one of engagement. Of being fully alive and I believe to be fully engaged and alive to what is occurring right here we also need to be awake to all that has been too and to therefore give ourselves fully to what is yet to come.

This requires us to have all our sense fully awake and fully engaged, to use all our senses, including the sixth sense. In so doing we will be able to live fully engaged and meaningful lives.

We need to awaken all our senses and thus not only hear life’s call,  but to also respond to it…

Amen